FILM VIEW; Those Sob Sisters, Death and Loss, Arrive

This winter, 'tis the season to be melancholy, what with a flood of feature films that render viewers inconsolable.

"It's a three-handkerchief movie," brags an ad for "My Life," in which Michael Keaton discovers he has inoperable cancer. A competing ad ups the ante, referring to "The Joy Luck Club" as a "four-hankie classic." It is, too, as it depicts the lives of four Chinese women who endure suffering in the country of their birth and, on top of that, cannot communicate with their American daughters.

There's "Schindler's List," which is being hailed as Steven Spielberg's masterpiece but a masterpiece that takes you through a harrowing 3 hours and 15 minutes of the Holocaust. Variety notes that the closing scene "will have many viewers crying their eyes out."

There's "Philadelphia," in which Tom Hanks's character dies of AIDS. According to The New Yorker, the director Jonathan Demme "has reinvented the weepie; he probably thought it was his duty to do so, having the misfortune to be working in an age when we have so much to weep about."

And there's "Shadowlands," in which Debra Winger shuffles off this mortal coil. "I'm going to die," she tells her husband, played by Anthony Hopkins. "The pain then is part of the happiness now. That's the deal." (Mr. Hopkins, who sported the stiffest lip in history in "The Remains of the Day," actually breaks down and wails in this one. Twice.)

We also have "A Perfect World," in which Kevin Costner leaves entire audiences snuffling, even though he plays a sociopath. (When a little boy asks, "Are you going to shoot me?" the irresistible Mr. Costner answers: "You and me are friends. Both of us is handsome devils, we both like RC Cola, and neither one of us got an old man that's worth a damn.")

"Heaven and Earth" takes us back to the miseries of Vietnam; in "In the Name of the Father" a father dies, and even "Mrs. Doubtfire" (to which most people go expecting laughs from Robin Williams) has an ending that causes small children and their divorced parents to mewl.

What is fascinating is that none of these movies -- except for "The Joy Luck Club" and perhaps "Shadowlands" -- is a conventional women's picture where tears are shed over lost love. Nor even over love regained. Instead, this season's weepers deal with death and loss -- subjects that make even some men lose it.

Since I cry at Hallmark commercials, I'm not a dependable bellwether. Unlike, say, my friend Pauline Kael, for many years the film critic of the New Yorker. A woman of intellectual rigor, she does not sympathize with indiscriminate sniveling. Once, at "Terms of Endearment," the lights came up and I was caught all smeary-faced in front of her. "Excuse me," I said. "I'm undone."

"Oh, no, you're not!" she replied.

Many people considered "Terms of Endearment" (it dealt with a mother and daughter) a movie for women. "A Perfect World," bout failed father-son relationships, makes men cry. Which raises the question: If a man cries at the movies, does he mind being caught in the act?

I was watching television one morning when Regis Philbin, the co-host of "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee," told of having attended a screening of "Shadowlands," which he designated "the tear-jerker of all time." Most men had cried, Mr. Philbin said, but he had not. He added gleefully that Joel Siegel, the ABC film critic, was among those who had fallen apart. "Joel Siegel was weeping," he crowed. "I had to slap him. I said, 'Pull yourself together, Joel.' "

Dr. Ellyn Kaschak, the psychologist who wrote "Engendered Lives," about male-female psychology, says woe-filled movies may be "a kind of vicarious therapy," especially in a time when so many lives have been touched by AIDS and other diseases. "It's like they can go into the movies and cry for a couple of hours instead of doing it in their real life."

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STILL, IF MEN ARE crying more at movies these days, Dr. Kaschak says drily, "I imagine it's about relationships between men." "Schindler's List" makes us cry for humanity, but the primary relationships in the film are between Schindler and his accountant Itzhak Stern, and between Schindler and the Nazi Amon Goeth. In "A Perfect World" it's Kevin Costner playing out the role of father to a child. In "Philadelphia" it's Tom Hanks as a man with AIDS and Denzel Washington as his lawyer. In "My Life," it's the notion of the Michael Keaton character talking to the son he fears he will never meet.

Marion Gindes, a psychologist practicing in Larchmont, N.Y., who has written about the effects of gender stereotyping, described the new weepers as movies where "strong men, empowered men, are the central characters."

"They're male themes, male stories," she says. "Tom Hanks is an attorney. Michael Keaton is a nice yuppie, and they are experiencing tragedy. It's not romanticized, it's not Elizabeth Taylor dying in Paris. In a sense, it's hard tragedy.

"Somebody should stand outside of these movies and see how many men come out crying," she added.

Inspired by this suggestion, I embarked on a survey. First I phoned my best friend and asked if her husband cried at movies. "He sobbed at Zeffirelli's 'Romeo and Juliet,' " she reported. "Then he said, 'Why didn't you tell me it was sad?' I said, 'You never heard of star-crossed lovers?' And he said, 'I should have figured it out. I knew it had something to do with "West Side Story." ' "

Then I inquired if my nephew had ever sobbed at a movie.

"At Clint Eastwood movies," he said. "The good part about crying in the movies is, nobody can see. Anyway, it's not fair to call it sobbing; it's just my eyes are kind of watering."

A few other results of my survey.

Meryl Gitter, a freelance television producer said her producer boyfriend, Chris Michon, cried at "My Life." "He's an emotional guy," she explained. "When he was at NBC, he did a piece called 'Blue Christmas,' and he showed the poor and the homeless and people in mental institutions, and ultimately, they didn't let him air it because they said it was too depressing."

I asked Holden Kepecs, an editor at Lucky Duck Productions, if he'd be embarrassed if someone caught him bawling at a movie. Indeed he would. "At the end of 'A Perfect World,' a tear came out of my left eye," he said, "and I put my hand up to the back of my head, like I was stretching, and I quickly wiped the tear off. The worst is, if you've been crying, and after the movie you walk out and there's a big crowd waiting to come in, and your eyes are all red. You have to just hang your head down low and walk directly to the bathroom."

One of my subjects, Suzanne Stahl, said her boyfriend John cried at "Dances With Wolves," when Kevin Costner's wolf got shot. I told her to wait until he sees "A Perfect World," in which Kevin Costner himself gets shot.

My husband cried at "Philadelphia." And when Bambi's mother was killed and at "Old Yeller," but mostly he's like my nephew. Crass, insensitive and loudly opposed to being dragged to a foreign film.

Some women like that kind of man.

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A version of this review appears in print on January 2, 1994, on Page 2002011 of the National edition with the headline: FILM VIEW; Those Sob Sisters, Death and Loss, Arrive. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe